https://www.free-ebooks.net/politics/The-Mueller-Report

So, here is the Mueller report, free and available. No one depends on Barr to draw conclusions about "the collusion". The whole Barr story is totally inflated for obvious reasons - to give Democrats something to cry about. :-)

Lindsey Graham In 2016: Trump's A "Kook." Lindsey Graham In 2017: Why Is The Media Is Labeling Trump A "Kook."

Feb. 17, 2016. South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham on Donald Trump: "I'm not going to try to get into the mind of Donald Trump because I don't think there's a whole lot of space there. I think he's a kook. I think he's crazy. I think he's unfit for office."

Oct. 9, 2017. Graham and Trump play a round of golf.

Nov. 30, 2017. Graham: "I’m concerned by the media’s attempt to label Trump as a kook or not fit to be President."

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tom...CW5LNBt8qy9czyw

So, we learnt that being a white catholic middle class kid and just standing in front of a drumming jerk means to commit a hate crime...

Hit 'em in their pockets, Nick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E4gXZQ3nmU

So, now it's not LGBTQ, but LGGBDTTTIQQAAPP. What's coming next?

Perhaps I'm wrong and it's sufficient to wear a MAGA hat to commit a hate crime.

Die schlimmen Nachrichten nehmen immer zu:

Why Wages Are Finally Rising, 10 Years After the Recession

www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/business/econ...pgtype=Homepage

"Average hourly earnings in April were 3.2 percent higher than a year earlier, the ninth straight month in which growth topped 3 percent, the Labor Department reported Friday.
Other measures diverge on the exact timing and rate of increase, but not on the basic trend: Wage growth, long stuck in neutral, has at last found a higher gear."


Aber sicher, unter Trump können nur die Millionäre davon profitieren, oder?

"The recent gains are going to those who need it most. Over the past year, low-wage workers have experienced the fastest pay increases, a shift from earlier in the recovery, when wage growth was concentrated at the top."

Und die Katastrophe geht weiter:

Arbeitslosigkeit bei 3,6%, niedrigste seit 49 Jahren.

California Senate passes bill that would keep Trump off 2020 ballot unless he releases tax returns
The California state Senate on Thursday approved a bill to require candidates appearing on the presidential primary ballot — including President Trump — to release five years' worth of income tax returns.

The measure was approved in a 27-10 vote, according to The Associated Press. California, for the first time, will be one of the first states to hold its presidential primary in the 2020 cycle.

Similar bills are making their way through the Washington and New Jersey state legislatures.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch...off-2020-ballot

Trump Hails Steel Tariffs in Defiance of GOP Request to End Them
Republican senators said they warned President Donald Trump Thursday against imposing tariffs on auto imports and discussed alternatives that would achieve the White House’s goals.

Trump followed with a tweet celebrating his current steel tariffs.

More than perhaps any other issue, trade is where Trump has broken with Republican free-market orthodoxy.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...est-to-end-them

The Economy and the Election
For as long as I've covered politics, the conventional wisdom has been that presidents win re-election in good economic times and they lose when the economy stinks. Ronald Reagan won re-election when the economy was booming. Jimmy Carter lost when we sunk into economic "malaise." But, we also know that it's more complicated than that.

President George H.W. Bush lost in 1992, despite the fact that GDP growth that year was a healthy 3.2%. And, President Barak Obama won rather easily in 2012, despite the fact that GDP growth that year was a more anemic 2.2%.
It's also been long assumed that consumer confidence is one of the best ways to gauge voter perception of the economy. Forget what the economists and Wall Street analysts say, if voters are feeling optimistic — well the economy is doing well. If they are feeling pessimistic, the economy is reeling.
But, we also know that partisanship (especially negative partisanship) is an important driver in perceptions of the economy. Voters are less willing than ever to give the other party any credit for a good economy, or to hold their own party accountable in a downturn.

The Michigan Consumer Survey has done some fantastic work on exploring the issue of partisan differences in perceptions of the economy. Last September, the University of Michigan's Richard Curtain found that partisan differences in perceptions of the economy are larger than at any time in recent history.
Not surprisingly, the study found that "Republicans held more favorable expectations during the Reagan, Bush, and Trump administrations, who were all Republican presidents. During the Obama administration, Democrats held more optimistic expectations."
For example, during the Reagan administration, Republicans were on average, 11.5 points more optimistic about the economy, while Democrats were 7.4 points more pessimistic, for a gap of 18.9 points. That gap grew a bit during the George W. Bush and Obama eras; 20.9 to 23.9 respectively.
But, under Trump, that gap has turned into a chasm. The partisan gap now is 55.4 percent — twice as big as it was during Bush and Obama era and three times as big as it was during Reagan. ...

... Ultimately, concludes Curtain, "the prime economic issues responsible for the persistence of the partisan divide are wage stagnation and income inequality."

However, we also know that during this same period (from 2008-2016), the Democratic party has become more associated with white, college-educated voters, and Republicans with white, non-college voters.
"From the mid-1990s to 2008, the diploma divide was small, if not negligible. Even though the Democrats had become the party of civil rights and a broad, multicultural coalition, they were also still the party of unions, which were largely made up of non-degree-holding whites. Therefore, white people with and without college degrees were equally as likely to be Democrats or Republicans.

But in 2008, the election of Barack Obama, a black man, signaled that the Democrats were becoming the party of progressive racial politics. "Obama's presidency simplifies the politics of race," Michael Tesler, an associate professor of political science at UC Irvine, says. "If you were a low-educated white, you were much more likely to know about the partisan differences on race [after Obama] than you were before." That change didn't show up in the party-affiliation data right away, but that's common, Tesler says. It often takes more than one election for people to switch their party identification. But by 2012, white voters without a college degree were distinctly more likely to vote Republican than those with college degrees."

In other words, Curtain is right that "wage stagnation and income inequality" are huge factors in the partisan divide. But, as Brownstein notes, this is because those white voters with a college degree are more likely to identify as Democrat and those (white voters) without a degree as Republican. So, when non-college voters said they were feeling pessimistic about their job prospects during the Obama-era, but became more optimistic post-2016, it's not because Trump was able to 'solve' the income inequality gap. Instead, they are more optimistic now because a Republican is in the White House.

This is also the conclusion reached by political scientists John Sides, Michael Tesler and Lynn Vavreck, In their book "Identity Crisis," they contend that issues of identity were more central to Trump's victory than the issues of so-called economic anxiety. "Attitudes concerning race, ethnicity and religion were more strongly related to how Americans voted in 2016 than in recent elections. By contrast," they write, "the apparent impact of economic anxiety was much smaller and not particularly distinctive compared to earlier elections."

This also helps explain why those living in some of the swankiest zip codes are the most resistant to Trump-ism, while those even in areas that have been hit hard by Trump policies like tariffs, continue to support him.

So, which is going to be a more important variable in 2020: the economy or identity? The answer is both. I know that sounds kind of like a cop-out answer. But, if we've learned anything from these last two presidential elections (2012 and 2016), it's that we can't have a simple "Economy election" that is separate from partisanship and identity.
https://cookpolitical.com/analysis/natio...my-and-election

A new Study confirms (Again) that Race, not Economics, drove former Democrats to Trump
Research on Iowa counties that swung from Obama to Trump indicates that GOP success was driven far more by sexism and racism than by economic anxiety.

Some disproven theories simply refuse to die. Among them is the notion that President Donald Trump's 2016 victory was largely due to economic anxiety on the part of blue-collar whites.

Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg has made that argument repeatedly of late, citing "the failure of this enormous American prosperity to reach so many people in so many communities," and Trump's promises of radical change, as the reasons for the president's upset win.

But a major study published a year ago found that Trump's support among non-college-educated whites—arguably the key to his Electoral College success—was driven far more by sexism and racism than by economic anxiety.

Now, a new study that focuses on one key constituency—white people in Iowa who voted for Barack Obama, and later for Trump—comes to that same conclusion.
"Economic distress is not a significant factor in explaining the shift in Iowa voters from Democrat to Republican between 2008 and 2016," write Iowa State University sociologists Ann Oberhauser, Daniel Krier, and Abdi Kusow. "The election outcomes do not signify [a revolt] among working-class voters left behind by globalization."
Rather, in 2016, "the nativist narrative about 'taking back America' and anti-immigrant sentiment became stronger forces than economic issues," Oberhauser said in announcing the findings. ...
"In general, the counties that swung the most [from Obama to Trump] were those that were almost entirely white," the researchers report. Rural counties were more likely to have shifted Republican than urban counties, as were counties in which fewer people had college educations.

In contrast, "median county income, adults not working, and county employment [rates]" were not predictive of a shift in political affiliation. Nor, surprisingly, was religiosity: The researchers argue that their findings suggest whiteness "plays a greater role in explaining Trump's support among white evangelicals than religion."

So the less educated you were, and the less likely you were to actually know any people of color, the more susceptible you were to Trump's fear-mongering. This suggests that these rural voters were voting to uphold "certain racialized and gendered norms," the researchers argue. ...

Status anxiety, especially when it's tied to one's racial identity, is a highly resonant appeal, in good economic times and bad.
"At the gut level, people react to identities and protect those identities more than their livelihoods," co-author Kusow concludes. And for many Americans, as political scientist Ashley Jardina has eloquently argued, that means their identities as white people.
https://psmag.com/news/new-study-confirm...t5QH9Sa7oNjrjYo

Trump says he's not inclined to let former counsel McGahn testify to Congress
President Donald Trump said on Thursday he did not believe he would allow former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify to committees in Congress, saying McGahn had already spoken to the special counsel on the Russia probe.

“I would say it’s done,” Trump told Fox News.
“I’ve had him testifying already for 30 hours,” Trump said, referring to McGahn’s testimony to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team.

Trump said allowing McGahn to testify would open the gates for others to be called.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-t...s-idUSKCN1S82AT

Study: Major media outlets' Twitter accounts amplify false Trump claims on average 19 times a day
Major media outlets failed to rebut President Donald Trump's misinformation 65% of the time in their tweets about his false or misleading comments, according to a Media Matters review. That means the outlets amplified Trump's misinformation more than 400 times over the three-week period of the study -- a rate of 19 per day.

The data shows that news outlets are still failing to grapple with a major problem that media critics highlighted during the Trump transition: When journalists apply their traditional method of crafting headlines, tweets, and other social media posts to Trump, they end up passively spreading misinformation by uncritically repeating his falsehoods.

The way people consume information in the digital age makes the accuracy of a news outlet’s headlines and social media posts more important than ever, because research shows they are the only thing a majority of people actually read.

But journalists are trained to treat a politician’s statements as intrinsically newsworthy, often quoting them without context in tweets and headlines and addressing whether the statement was accurate only in the body of the piece, if at all. When the politician’s statements are false, journalists who quote them in headlines and on social media without context end up amplifying the falsehoods.
https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/0...imes-day/223572

Man kann Trump nur besiegen, indem man die Hillarys dieser Welt in Pension schickt.

Forever Logical @ForeverLogical
BarackObama doesn't have to brag...
Only 13x in the last 72 years has a sitting US President NOT been The Most Admired Man in the U.S.
So far Trump is 0-2
Obama won it a year before becoming President, all 8 years during and the last 2 years after.
6:09 PM - 2 May 2019

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dvfwb3QUUAEwBS5.png

Zitat von Willie im Beitrag #6358

---

California Senate passes bill that would keep Trump off 2020 ballot unless he releases tax returns
The California state Senate on Thursday approved a bill to require candidates appearing on the presidential primary ballot — including President Trump — to release five years' worth of income tax returns.

The measure was approved in a 27-10 vote, according to The Associated Press. California, for the first time, will be one of the first states to hold its presidential primary in the 2020 cycle.

Similar bills are making their way through the Washington and New Jersey state legislatures.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch...off-2020-ballot

---

Zitat von Willie im Beitrag #6361

---

A new Study confirms (Again) that Race, not Economics, drove former Democrats to Trump
Research on Iowa counties that swung from Obama to Trump indicates that GOP success was driven far more by sexism and racism than by economic anxiety.

Some disproven theories simply refuse to die. Among them is the notion that President Donald Trump's 2016 victory was largely due to economic anxiety on the part of blue-collar whites.

Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg has made that argument repeatedly of late, citing "the failure of this enormous American prosperity to reach so many people in so many communities," and Trump's promises of radical change, as the reasons for the president's upset win.

But a major study published a year ago found that Trump's support among non-college-educated whites—arguably the key to his Electoral College success—was driven far more by sexism and racism than by economic anxiety.

Now, a new study that focuses on one key constituency—white people in Iowa who voted for Barack Obama, and later for Trump—comes to that same conclusion.
"Economic distress is not a significant factor in explaining the shift in Iowa voters from Democrat to Republican between 2008 and 2016," write Iowa State University sociologists Ann Oberhauser, Daniel Krier, and Abdi Kusow. "The election outcomes do not signify [a revolt] among working-class voters left behind by globalization."
Rather, in 2016, "the nativist narrative about 'taking back America' and anti-immigrant sentiment became stronger forces than economic issues," Oberhauser said in announcing the findings. ...
"In general, the counties that swung the most [from Obama to Trump] were those that were almost entirely white," the researchers report. Rural counties were more likely to have shifted Republican than urban counties, as were counties in which fewer people had college educations.

In contrast, "median county income, adults not working, and county employment [rates]" were not predictive of a shift in political affiliation. Nor, surprisingly, was religiosity: The researchers argue that their findings suggest whiteness "plays a greater role in explaining Trump's support among white evangelicals than religion."

So the less educated you were, and the less likely you were to actually know any people of color, the more susceptible you were to Trump's fear-mongering. This suggests that these rural voters were voting to uphold "certain racialized and gendered norms," the researchers argue. ...

Status anxiety, especially when it's tied to one's racial identity, is a highly resonant appeal, in good economic times and bad.
"At the gut level, people react to identities and protect those identities more than their livelihoods," co-author Kusow concludes. And for many Americans, as political scientist Ashley Jardina has eloquently argued, that means their identities as white people.
https://psmag.com/news/new-study-confirm...t5QH9Sa7oNjrjYo

---

America Is Divided by Education
The gulf between the party identification of white voters with college degrees and those without is growing rapidly. Trump is widening it.

One of the most striking patterns in yesterday’s election was years in the making: a major partisan divide between white voters with a college degree and those without one.

According to exit polls, 61 percent of non-college-educated white voters cast their ballots for Republicans while just 45 percent of college-educated white voters did so. Meanwhile 53 percent of college-educated white voters cast their votes for Democrats compared with 37 percent of those without a degree.

The diploma divide, as it’s often called, is not occurring across the electorate; it is primarily a phenomenon among white voters. It’s an unprecedented divide, and is in fact a complete departure from the diploma divide of the past. Non-college-educated white voters used to solidly belong to Democrats, and college-educated white voters to Republicans. Several events over the past six decades have caused these allegiances to switch, the most recent being the candidacy, election, and presidency of Donald Trump. ....

But in 2008, the election of Barack Obama, a black man, signaled that the Democrats were becoming the party of progressive racial politics. “Obama’s presidency simplifies the politics of race,” Michael Tesler, an associate professor of political science at UC Irvine, says. “If you were a low-educated white, you were much more likely to know about the partisan differences on race [after Obama] than you were before.”

That change didn’t show up in the party-affiliation data right away, but that’s common, Tesler says. It often takes more than one election for people to switch their party identification. But by 2012, white voters without a college degree were distinctly more likely to vote Republican than those with college degrees.

In the 2016 election, 48 percent of college-educated white voters voted for Trump, compared with 66 percent of non-college-educated white voters. A Marist poll in October of this year found that 55 percent of non-college-educated white voters approved of the job Trump was doing, compared with just 39 percent of college-educated white voters. When Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh squeaked through a Senate confirmation hearing with a sexual assault allegation in tow, 54 percent of non-college-educated white voters supported him, compared with 38 percent who had gone to college. And the partisan diploma divide held steady last night, reflecting a divide in values between those with degrees and those without. ...

... That nostalgia, however, is for a time when black Americans and other minority groups had significantly fewer civil rights. And a Republican rhetoric that centers a longing for an era of white prosperity, rife with racist violence against black people, is why it’s impossible to understand the diploma divide without accounting for racial resentment. Needless to say, black Americans and other minority groups aren’t as keen on returning to the past. ...

... David N. Smith, a professor at the University of Kansas, came to a similar conclusion when he and Eric Hanley took a dive into the 2016 American National Election Survey. They found that demographic data such as education are important predictors of which party someone votes for. But “when you bring the attitudes variables into account as well, what emerges is that attitudes loom even larger than demographics,” he told me.
Here’s how he put it: If you look at white people who voted for Trump—both those with college degrees and those without—and identify everybody with a high level of resentment toward minorities, women, and Muslims, as well as those who want an arrogant, assertive leader, there’s almost no one left. The vast majority of Trump voters share those sentiments, the researchers found, regardless of education level.
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/ar...olitics/575113/

Es lohnt sich den Artikel in Gaenze zu lesen.

"...That nostalgia, however, is for a time when black Americans and other minority groups had significantly fewer civil rights. And a Republican rhetoric that centers a longing for an era of white prosperity, rife with racist violence against black people, is why it’s impossible to understand the diploma divide without accounting for racial resentment.

"If you look at white people who voted for Trump—both those with college degrees and those without—and identify everybody with a high level of resentment toward minorities, women, and Muslims, as well as those who want an arrogant, assertive leader, there’s almost no one left.

The vast majority of Trump voters share those sentiments, the researchers found, regardless of education level."

Langsam aber sicher kommt alles raus:

This Explains the Anti-Barr Freakout

https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/02/new...trump-campaign/

Wichtig ist das hier:
"The public schedule for a 2014 conference led by Halper shows that Kohler also spoke to the same group about the same Russian case on May 9, 2014."

Bitte das Datum beachten !

Eine lang geplante Operation, lange bevor "Kandidat Trump" geboren wurde.

Und die Kacke ist weiter am dampfen:

"Ukrainian Embassy confirms DNC contractor solicited Trump dirt in 2016"

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/...mp-dirt-in-2016

Trump brags about chummy phone call to Putin to mock 'Russian hoax'
The Mueller report laid out in excruciating detail how Russia nefariously meddled in the 2016 election — but Trump still refuses to confront Putin about it.

Volume I of special counsel Robert Mueller's report explicitly lays out the massive Russian effort to interfere in the 2016 election to help elect Trump.

Yet in an hour-long phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, Trump didn't confront nor vow to punish Putin's government for its efforts. Rather, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters that the two men "agreed" that the Russia investigation is "over and there was no collusion."

And shortly thereafter, Trump himself tweeted to brag about discussing the Russia investigation — or as he put it, the "Russian hoax" — with Putin.
https://shareblue.com/trump-brags-putin-...r-russian-hoax/

Robert Mueller told us everything we need to know
The special counsel did so despite the Justice Department policies that prevented him from formally accusing Trump of a crime: Another view

Special counsel Robert Mueller didn’t explicitly accuse the president of a crime, but those of us who defended Mueller’s investigation have been vindicated. Mueller was medicine for our civic health.
Whether or not the president can be indicted by a federal grand jury is, in the grand story of the American experiment, an arcane debate. The United States is an experiment in self-government and the rule of law, not a law school class on criminal procedure.

When the president violates the law, there are two failures: legal and political.
The legal failure is that a criminal might go free on technicalities. But this kind of miscarriage happens every day; our institutions let some guilty people off as the price we pay for defending the rights of the accused.
Similarly, the risk that the president (or any other official) might abuse their power is the price we pay for empowering them to govern effectively.

The political crisis is more serious. The government draws its power from the people, and if the people acquiesce to government corruption, then all the judges, juries and prosecutors in the country won’t make a difference.
That’s why it was so important that Mueller wrote his report so clearly and comprehensively, and that the report was released to the public. He explained in clear, detailed prose exactly how unpatriotic, irresponsible and immoral the White House has become.

The special counsel did so despite the Justice Department policies that prevented him from formally accusing the president of a crime. By strictly adhering to the rules, Mueller ensured that his report was above legal reproach. Its legitimacy under the law is without question. So are the facts.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2...tes/3656440002/

Sixty-four percent of voters said Democrats should accept Mueller’s findings and move on without launching any new Russia probes, though 61 percent said they support a special counsel being appointed to investigate the origins of the FBI’s probe into the Trump campaign. Fifty-five percent said they believe bias played a role in the FBI launching its investigation into contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administrat...ent-proceedings

EXCLUSIVE: Trump vineyard also hired undocumented workers
It's not just Trump’s golf courses that recruited undocumented immigrants. The Trump vineyards in Charlottesville, Virginia, also hired them according to several employees.

The number of Hispanic immigrants who claim to have worked without legal documents for the Trump Organization continues to grow.

Univision News interviewed seven undocumented employees who claim to have worked producing Trump wine in the state of Virginia, putting in long hours from sunrise to sunset, without overtime pay.
https://www.univision.com/univision-news...umented-workers